“Yes.” He stared into her eyes. “A refined and ancient battle strategy that I admire. Not every woman can employ it to her advantage.”
“I’m so proud of you, Kit,” she said in a soft voice.
He gave a disgruntled sigh. “You’re marrying one of my pupils. It does not feel like a mark of success.”
She nodded vaguely. “Yes, I accepted his proposal last month.”
“Only last month?”
She hesitated. “Yes.”
Not hesitating, he took her face between his hands and bent to kiss her ever so softly on the mouth. He could have devoured her. Instead his lips settled on hers. She breathed a soft sigh, lowering her gaze. He glanced down at her lush breasts, straining against the delicate seams of her silk bodice. She had accepted him at his worst. He was afraid to show her that in some ways he was still desperate. And that in others he had become a master. “Why did you choose him?” he whispered, wrapping his hands around her waist.
She looked at him through her half-closed eyes. “Your hair is darker than I remember, and my aunt chose him for me. Is that what you wanted to know?”
“How do you—”
He kissed her so deeply that she buckled. He caught her, pinning her to his body for a brief moment of bliss before he gathered her in his arms. She stared up at him with a bewildered smile, whispering, “What are you going to do if someone comes?”
“I swear,” he muttered, his grasp on her tightening, “that I will kill the first person who enters this room.”
She lifted her head in alarm. “What if that person happens to be the marquess or his son?”
“Well, of course I’m not going to hurt a child.”
“What if it’s one of your pupils?”
“Like Godfrey?” he asked, his eyes narrowing.
“What if it’s my aunt?”
Kit turned pale at that thought. “In that case I’ll have to let her kill me. Sit with me a moment.” He led her across the room to a long chaise hidden in a discreetly curtained niche. No one could ever accuse the marquess of not providing enough convenient places to make mischief in his house. “We need more time. We need to be alone. We need—”
“—to breathe,” Violet said, her hand lifted to her bodice. “I am too tightly bound tonight.”
“Take my breath,” he whispered, lowering his face to hers.
“That doesn’t help. Every time you kiss me, I feel like I’m going to pass out. Being near you makes me go faint, Kit.”
“You won’t faint.” He rubbed her wrists through her gloves, glancing back at the door. He detected movement below the stairs, the clatter of glasses, a footman approaching. In a house like this, fortunately, the servants were trained to look the other way during an indiscretion.
But he couldn’t even think of the name Violet in the same sentence with a word like
tryst
or
indiscretion
. He could not think clearly at all.
Oddly, what he did think about was all that he and Violet had gone through together. Violet breaking out in the measles, Kit certain he had killed her as he carted her off inelegantly to the baron at the manor house. He could still hear Lady Ashfield wailing in panic. And how could he forget Violet standing up to Ambrose, insisting he treat Kit with respect or go away?
She was the one responsible for Kit’s redemption. Her friendship and faith in his goodness had given him the strength to survive the workhouse. Would his repayment be to ruin her? She twined her hand around his neck and coaxed his face toward hers. He could have stretched out beside her and spent the night talking about whatever came into their heads. Or maybe just kissing.
Why did she have to belong to someone else?
Why did that someone happen to be one of Kit’s best-paying pupils? Not the most talented, mind you, not even one he particularly liked, but there was an implied contract between pupil and master that Kit was fairly certain did not include a clause that allowed a discount for ravishing a student’s bride-to-be.
“Kit, stop brooding for a moment, and look at me.”
He smiled slowly. It was good to hear her scold him. “Godfrey doesn’t know anything about your past, does he?” she asked him urgently.
“No. Only few close friends—”
He stared down into her eyes. An ache pulsed to life deep inside him again. “I won’t tell anyone I knew you before. It never crossed my mind.”
“I wasn’t thinking only of me, Kit. You’ve made a name for yourself. Nothing should spoil that. I’m happier for you than I can hold inside me.”
“Then leave him,” he said bluntly.
“Leave him?” she whispered, her eyes evading his. “I’ve only just agreed to marry him. We cannot do this. I have to go.”
He knew he could not stop her. Their kiss aroused not only his sexual nature but his conscience. Taking her virtue would only prove what the workhouse warden had prophesied the day that Kit had walked out the gates: He could not be redeemed at all, and in the end he would drag everyone who believed in him to hell.
She lifted the back of her hand to his cheek. It was an ambiguous gesture, wistful and inviting at the same time. “Kit? Kiss me again, and then I must go.”
He lowered his head, his mouth slanting over hers. He felt her lips soften, and for once he wished he had not become a man who listened to his conscience. He felt her lips part, and he forgot everything except the sweetness of her mouth. The ache he had denied thrummed from his fingers as they glided down her shoulder to her breasts. She warmed his blood, like winter fire and fine wine.
He felt decadent, drunk on this small taste of her. She kissed with a sweet passion that could enslave him.
“Kit,” she said in a deep voice.
“Is this our first kiss or another farewell?”
She shook her head, her fingers sliding across his mouth, to stem his questions or to end their kiss, he wasn’t sure. He was too desperate to prolong their contact to work through it.
“I’ve thought about you, Kit.”
“Don’t go yet.” He straightened, calling on self-denial, discipline, whatever weapon was at his disposal.
He heard her breath catch and felt remorse shiver down the nape of his neck into his soul. Dying inside, he pulled her hand from his mouth, kissed her gloved knuckles, and lifted her to her feet from the chaise and through the curtains. Slowly her gaze lifted to his.
He studied her as if she were a dueling opponent and his life hinged on her next move. He studied her face for nuance. He listened to the cadence of her breath for innuendo. A deadly rival if ever he had met one. What did he see in her eyes?
Wounded innocence? No. Violet stood on higher ground. She had never wasted her time seeking anyone’s sympathy. An invitation? Kit would not insult her nor delude himself on that account.
What he read in Violet’s expression cut deeper. He might not have imagined her brief response to him, but whatever she felt beyond poignant resignation she would not encourage.
She had protected Kit when he was a vile, obnoxious youth. It was his turn now to protect her. He might not be a gentleman, but he had earned a place.
He walked her to the door and checked that the corridor was empty before he let her go.
In the past he had remained hidden in the church-yard and watched her run through the woods until she reached the top of the slope and he knew she was safe.
Now he stayed in the shadows and waited for her to reach the well-lit corner, where she would turn and disappear. He swallowed hard as she hesitated, glancing back over her shoulder as if she still could not quite believe what had happened tonight.
He drew a breath, willing his body to settle down.
He had left an ugly impression on her the last time they’d been together in Monk’s Huntley. It killed him, remembering how he must have looked to her. Helpless. Humiliated. Worth less than an animal being sold.
Part of him had never wanted to see her again. The other part desperately wanted her to see what he’d become.
When he fell asleep later tonight, it would not be locked in a solitary cell, nursing a hard blow to the head. He wouldn’t crawl through a tunnel to reach his rooms. He was his own man. He was free. And if he wanted to stay up until daybreak thinking about the woman he had kissed, he would do so.
But for all of his accomplishments, he was still a thief. If he wanted her, he would have to steal her from another man.
Chapter 8
A
unt Francesca, stubborn beldam that she was, had insisted that she felt well enough to stay to have pastry with the other matrons and that she would go home with Godfrey and Violet.
Sir Godfrey had stared at his betrothed and his fencing master on the dance floor and could hardly believe the compliments he heard. Guests seemed to be comparing their improvised country reel to everything from a Hungarian courtship ritual to a pagan Highland dance. He half expected someone to arrange Fenton’s swords across the floor for this highly . . . Well, Godfrey wasn’t sure how to describe the dance.
Improper to ignore the music and make up one’s own steps at a party of this importance. Only the lower classes would dance like . . . He gaped at Violet, her head thrown back, her laughter unaffected, those dark curls escaping her pearl comb to caress her white skin.
Suggestive.
Her behavior suggested many things to Sir Godfrey. None of which he cared to ponder. Violet was virtue incarnate.
And Fenton? From what Godfrey knew of him, Fenton led a decent life.
He insisted that his pupils study hard and avoid trouble. Those who did not adhere to the code could not attend the academy. He was Godfrey’s secret hero. He was the strong but gentle brother Godfrey had always wanted in place of the two stupid brutes who throughout his youth had bashed him around for sport.
But that was in the past. The brutes could kiss his rump. Godfrey anticipated that his business would double in the weeks before the ton left London for their country estates. After Fenton’s well-received spectacle of sword mastery, the sales of lanterns and walking canes that Godfrey had stocked in the emporium would increase. He had given away all his cards to the well-heeled philanthropists who had asked about his affairs. A news reporter had even introduced himself and promised a nice mention of Godfrey’s arcade in the paper.
The dance was almost over. Godfrey felt as if he were aging by the minute. The way they danced . . . It just wasn’t done. The manner in which Violet and Fenton moved. Goodness. It went beyond insouciant. It bordered on dangerous.
What if one of them tripped the other and fell? Godfrey had practically put out his back performing with that lantern tonight. Where did Fenton find the energy to dance like that?
In another half hour or so he would be comforting Violet over her aunt’s failing health and making plans to take over the country manor in Monk’s Huntley. Godfrey could not imagine himself living in an old pile that faced a graveyard, but it would do for Violet and their children on the occasional holiday. The deed was paid off. And Violet did seem to harbor a strange attachment to the place.
“We can’t sell the house, Godfrey,” she had told him repeatedly. “Not until you see it.”
He felt an embarrassing fondness for her. Other people admired her, too. He noticed quizzing glasses raised to study her and Fenton.
Bless her
, he thought.
Violet is only using her gifts to advance us. She is too refined to be drawn into an encounter with a common swordsman.
But she wasn’t above dancing for a benefit.
And Fenton might be common, but it wouldn’t surprise Godfrey to hear that the man had been raised to an honorary appointment or some such tribute in the future. The marquess wanted to employ him as the family’s master-at-arms. If Fenton accepted, Godfrey would not be surprised. He might even ride on Fenton’s coattails, if there was profit to be made.
His spirits elevated, Godfrey decided he would wait until after the dance to chide Violet. It wouldn’t be fair to spoil the moment. After all, he wouldn’t want society to get the impression that she and Fenton were actually conducting a . . . He was at a loss as to what his fiancée and fencing master were doing.
Undignified? Not with dignitaries imitating their inventive figures and looking altogether damned ridiculous. Had Violet been tippling? Not unless she did so in secret. Furthermore, no one on earth but Violet could aspire to pirouette in midair like a spinneret.
Bless her
, he thought again. Violet was only dancing with Fenton because Godfrey had asked her to. She would never act like the giddy debutantes in the ballroom who were still oohing and ahhing over Fenton’s excessive display of chivalry.
Violet’s manners had sent Godfrey into a swoon the first day they had been introduced.
“Sir Godfrey, I believe,” a deep voice said from above him, and he looked up into the gregarious face of the Most Honorable, the fifth Marquess of Sedgecroft, his influential and wealthy host. “Is this an inopportune time to mention a small matter of business?”
Godfrey bowed so deeply that his nose touched his knee.
“Are you certain that you don’t want me to stay beside you the rest of the night, Aunt Francesca? It is a strange house, and you cannot see well in the dark.”
“I see more than you think I do, but no, I do not wish you to stay.” Her aunt spoke quietly from the bed, where she rested against a pile of pillows. “Not if you cannot hold still for me to sleep. Why are your cheeks damp? Have you been crying?”
“I went outside in the garden while you were undressing. It’s starting to rain.”
“You went outside at this hour? Let me feel your head. How often have I told you that it is unhealthful to stand in the damp after a strenuous activity?”
Violet swung around the bedpost, lowering herself to her aunt’s side. Francesca’s fingertips pressed against her forehead before slipping down her nape to test for fever. “How am I?” Violet asked, restraining a grin.